White House
by LynstHolin
Summary: AU DRARRY Exchange-student Harry Potter decides to stay in the US after school ends, in a beach house shared with Draco Malfoy. Sequels added as second and third chapters.
1. Chapter 1

Warnings: non-explicit sexual references, drinking and drug-use and other bad behavior, NOT a happy-ending fic

The lyrics to 'White Houses' belong to Vanesa Carlton and Stephan Jenkins.

I wrote this for a contest on deviantART. It's my first song-fic. I'm not sure I did that well with it, but it was an interesting exercise in doing something different.

...

_Crashed on the floor when I moved in_

_This little bungalow with some strange new friends_

_Stay up too late, and I'm too thin_

_We promise each other it's 'til the end_

"You've only known these people for a couple of months," Harry's mother was saying through the crackle and static of a poor connection.

"Draco reserved a bungalow in the Florida Keys. We can all split the rent."

She sighed. "I can't make you come back. You're of age. But I don't like to think of you on your own in another country."

Harry made an impatient noise. "You're the one that suggested that I be an exchange student."

"How are you going to pay your share of the rent?"

"The rent is cheap because it's the off-season. And I've got a job lined up."

"A Muggle job?" Her voice sounded resigned.

"I'm going to do maintenance at a posh resort."

"A wizard, doing menial labor. I don't understand you young people today. The _Prophet_ just had an article about how many teenagers are rejecting magic these days and-"

"Goodbye, Mum." Harry hung up the phone.

Draco was giving Harry a knowing grin. "I notice you didn't tell her that you already moved in. What did she think about the job?"

"Not much. She's still so into the whole wizards and witches thing."

Draco leaned back against the wall and looked up at the ceiling. "It's so cheesy. Like living in a Dungeons and Dragons game. Robes and wand-waving and potions. Ugh."

"We're here!" The Greengrass sisters trooped in carrying rolled up sleeping bags. Blaise was right behind them with Pansy, who was sharing a bungalow just down the beach with Theo, Greg and Vince. Everyone hunkered down on the floor to pass a joint and a bottle around. The girls giggled at Harry's London accent and came up with excuses to run their fingers through his floppy black hair.

The tiny bungalow was shabby, and the roof leaked when it rained. White paint peeled from its boards. But for five teens that had just graduated from school, it was heaven. They worked in the daytime and stayed up all night, running on nicotine and pills. If they ate at all, it was pure carbs. They had next to no furniture; their money went for alcohol and and other substances. Daffy and Tori had the tiny bedroom, while Harry, Blaise, and Draco took the main room's floor. If Harry rolled over just a little in his sleep, he woke up in the kitchenette.

Harry browned up in the sun, but Draco just turned red and peeled. In the early morning, after everyone else was passed out, the two of them whispered to one another about their plans. Better jobs, a bigger bungalow to share, staying in the Keys forever. Sometimes, making a friend was like falling in love.

_Now we're spinning empty bottles_

_It's the five of us_

_With pretty eyed boys girls die to trust_

_I can't resist the day_

_No, I can't resist the day_

"What are we, thirteen years old?" Blaise scoffed. He was slouched against the wall with a joint cupped in his hand, his cat-like eyes scornful.

"Come on, it'll be fun." Pansy set the empty Corona bottle on the floor as she furtively glanced at Draco. Her infatuation with him was painfully obvious. She spun, and the bottle pointed at Daffy. Shrugging, Pansy leaned over and kissed the other girl. Her roommates chortled lecherously.

Daffy's spin pointed at Greg. She didn't look happy about having to kiss the caveman-like boy, but she did it. Greg's spin pointed at Blaise. Pansy slapped Greg's hand when he went to spin again. "If girls kiss girls, then boys kiss boys."

"I ain't gonna kiss a _dude_! I'm not gay!"

"Fine. You don't get to play. It's your spin, Blaise."

Blaise got Tori. Tori got Draco, Draco got Harry. Harry's stomach felt funny when Draco came toward him; those luminous gray eyes of his were mesmerizing in close-up. His lips were chapped from the salt-air and the sun, and they left Harry's too soon. They both laughed nervously.

By the time the sun rose, everyone else was unconscious on the floor. Harry and Draco carefully stepped over the bodies. Behind the bungalow, Draco leaned in to take another kiss, and Harry opened up to him. Two skinny boys, tangled up in each other. Light and dark. The day was going to be another scorcher. The sun was already nearly unbearable, but Harry didn't want to leave those sun-burned arms that were around him.

_Jenny screams out and it's no pose_

_'Cause when she dances she goes and goes_

_Beer through the nose on an inside joke_

_And I'm so excited, I haven't spoken_

_And she's so pretty, and she's so sure_

Draco was the center of the group, the eye of the storm, the nucleus around which everyone else orbited. He could command attention just by standing still, but when he drank Red Bull with vodka, he positively vibrated with energy.

Harry watched Draco dance with Pansy, with Daffy and Tori, with girls they didn't know. The after-hours club was like a sauna, and Draco's white shirt was soaked through with sweat and sticking to his skin. The beat sped up and Draco lifted his arms above his head; his mouth opened like he was howling, but nothing could be heard above the music. Harry envied the ability Draco had to forget himself that way; it took a level of confidence and intoxication that Harry had yet to achieve.

As he nursed his bottle of beer, Harry wondered if he wanted Draco, or if he wanted to _be_ Draco. He started feeling resentful at being left out, and he sullenly ignored girls that tried to talk to him as he glared down at the floor.

"Do you want to play with my magic wand?" a voice shouted in his ear. It was Draco, who was at that level of intoxication where bad puns seemed like the height of wit. Harry snorted Miller Light out of his nose; apparently, he was also at that same degree of drunkenness. Before Harry could begin to formulate a response, Draco had spun away, another beautiful body on the dance floor.

_It's alright and it's nice not to be so alone_

_But I hold on to your secrets in white houses_

_Maybe I'm a little bit over my head_

_I come undone at the things he said_

_And he's so funny in his bright red shirt_

_We were all in love and we all got hurt_

_I sneak into his car's cracked leather seat_

_The smell of gasoline in the summer heat_

_Boy, we're going way too fast_

_It's all too sweet to last_

Blaise was with Pansy, and then with Tori. Theo was with Daffy, and then with Pansy. Greg waited until Daffy was too drunk to say no. Vince grew sullen and resentful.

Draco was Harry's, though no one else knew. "It's more special, having a secret, don't you think?" he said. "I've never felt this way about anyone else," he said. "I love you, Harry," he said.

Pansy still pursued Draco. That night, she was on ecstasy and wouldn't stop trying to climbing on him. When she was distracted by Daffy dropping the ceramic Buddha-shaped bong, Harry and Draco ducked out of the bungalow, getting into Draco's wreck of a Honda. "Your family's rich. Why don't they get you a better car?" Harry asked.

"They won't give me a thing until I become a wizard again." Draco made the car go as fast as it could down Highway 1; it shook like it was going to burst apart and made a burning smell.

The night was hot and still. Draco pulled the car onto a deserted beach and attacked Harry, tickling him. "Stop it," Harry gasped as laughter was forced out of him. They play-fought until it turned into something else. The fake leather of the car seat squeaked beneath them. Draco had a way of making Harry laugh even when he was on the brink of an orgasm. "I love you, too," Harry whispered.

_It's alright_

_And I put myself in his hands_

_But I hold on to your secrets in white houses_

_Love, or something ignites in my veins_

_And I pray it never fades in white houses_

_My first time, hard to explain_

_Rush of blood, oh, and a little bit of pain_

_On a cloudy day, it's more common than you think_

_He's my first mistake_

Blaise had taken the girls to town, and Harry and Draco had the bungalow to themselves for once. Harry was gazing out a window at a leaden sky that promised a storm. Draco came up behind Harry , sliding his arms around the other boy's waist. His perfect teeth nipped and teased at Harry's neck. "We can try it now," he said; "They won't be back for hours."

Harry gave himself to Draco completely. It stung, and Harry bled some, but it wasn't too bad for the first time. Afterward, they lay together, their sweat mingling. They had never been able to be completely naked with each other before. Harry thought Draco was beautiful from his prominent collar-bones down to his high-arched feet. "Some day, it will just be us living together, and we can be like this as often as we want," he mused.

Draco threw one skinny thigh over Harry's hip. "We'll do this every day."

_Maybe you were all faster than me_

_We gave each other up so easily_

_These silly little wounds will never mend_

_I feel so far from where I've been_

It came out of nowehere. Harry's mouth opened, but it took him a few attempts to get the words out. "I thought we were friends."

Pansy's eyes were hard. "You knew I liked him. You _knew_."

"You slept with Theo and Blaise, so what does it matter if I slept with Draco?" Hands grabbed Harry and spun him around. Vince punched him in the stomach and the chest and the chin and the nose.

Harry staggered into the bungalow with his nose gushing blood. The sympathy he expected from Draco didn't come. "How did she know? Did you tell somebody?" the other boy demanded. "I told you not to tell anyone, Harry!"

"I didn't! I swear!"

It didn't matter if Draco believed him or not. From that moment on, it was over. The coldness that radiated from his ex-lover made Harry feel homesick. His mother would have her wish; he would go back home, and back to the wizarding world. Harry couldn't bear the life he was leading any more.

_So I go, and I will not be back here again_

_I'm gone as the day is fading on white houses_

"I'm leaving. Blaise is taking me to the airport." Backpack slung over one shoulder, Harry waited for a response.

Draco didn't even look up from the issue of High Times he was reading. "Bye, Potter."

Harry trudged out the door. Vince and Greg were outside their bungalow, staring at him and talking too low for him to hear. The story that was going around was that Harry had taken advantage of Draco when he was too drunk and stoned to know what he was doing. Draco hadn't bothered to refute it, and Harry knew he never would. Harry had thought their relationship was a fun, sweet secret, but, for Draco, it was a shameful one.

When the plane left the runway, Harry pressed his nose to the window, looking for a glimpse of the key where he had given up his body and heart for the first time; he knew the bungalow would be too small to see.

_And you, maybe you'll remember me_

_What I gave is yours to keep_

_In white houses_


	2. Chapter 2

I hadn't originally planned on writing a sequel to "White House, ' but people kept asking. I said maybe if I found the right song, and someone mentioned 'Time After Time'-which was perfect, so, yeah, I had to write it. But 'Time After Time' is short when you remove the repeating parts, so I added on another Cyndi lauper song. Happy ending this time, people-are you happy now? XD

'Time After Time' belongs to Cyndi Lauper and Rob Hyman. 'True Colors' belongs to Billy Steinberg, Tom Kelly, and Cyndi Lauper.

...

ONE

_Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick,_

_And think of you_

_Caught up in circles confusion-_

_Is nothing new_

_Flashback-warm nights-_

_Almost left behind_

_Suitcases of memories,_

_Time after-_

Harry lay on the bed, the twin he had slept in since he was five, and shuffled through a pile of photographs. Muggle Polaroids, as they had rejected everything wizard that summer. Harry used his wand to Vanish them one by one: Pansy inhaling from a phallic bong; Vince passed out on the floor with obscenities written on his face in black Magic Marker; Blaise down to his boxers in a strip poker game; Harry himself, sitting in the middle of a huge sand castle that they had all built together one stoned day.

He came to a shot of Draco on the beach with a white stripe of zinc oxide down his nose and his hair uncombed. He was too skinny. He was perfect. Harry pointed his wand at it, then lowered his hand. The photo was tucked in a dresser drawer, under his socks.

...

_Sometimes you picture me-_

_I'm walking too far ahead_

_You're calling to me, I can't hear_

_What you've said-_

_Then you say-go slow-_

_I fall behind-_

_The second hand unwinds_

The wizarding world was small, and the Malfoy family was famous. Draco was beautiful, young, and tragic: perfect tabloid fodder. _It was a shame_, older people tutted, _a downright shame, the way young wizards and witches lose their way these days_. _He entered one of those Muggle rehab clinics, you know. Didn't want a Healer_.

Draco didn't know what he was doing at the Quidditch World Cup; he had agreed to far too many things when he was too weak from withdrawal to say no. He hated how people looked at him like they knew him. Then he saw someone that _did _know him. He averted his face, not wanting to read the words forming on Harry's lips .

...

_If you're lost you can look-and you will find me_

_Time after time_

_If you fall I will catch you-I'll be waiting_

_Time after time_

_Are you all right_? That was what Harry had said, but there was no way he could have been heard over the crowd. Tori had been with Draco, clutching his arm possessively. The story the tabloids told about her was that she was the kind, understanding fiancée who had stood by her man and helped him through his addiction. She looked different, having gone from punk to high fashion, as befitted the future wife of wizard nobility.

Draco also looked different. He was even more frail, but his face was puffy. Harry assumed it was due to having just been through rehab. He still seemed perfect to Harry, though, even with his eyes swollen .

...

_After my picture fades and darkness has_

_Turned to gray_

_Watching through windows-you're wondering_

_If I'm OK_

_Secrets stolen from deep inside_

_The drum beats out of time-_

One drunken night before he went to rehab, Pansy had told Draco that she had seen Harry and him kissing on the beach. "I could tell you weren't into it, that he was taking advantage of you," she had said. It was astonishing, the things that people could make themselves believe. It gave Draco hope, actually; it made it seem possible that some day he would forget what he really, truly wanted.

If Harry had looked angry, Draco could have put it out of his mind much more easily. But those gorgeous eyes had gone big behind the glasses, and his eyebrows had drawn up in the middle. Not anger. Worry.

Alone in the hotel room, Draco opened the mini-bar and cradled a tiny bottle of vodka in one hand. It would be enough when combined with the pills the head-shrinker had prescribed. Draco wanted to be completely numbed.

TWO

_You with the sad eyes_

_Don't be discouraged_

_Oh I realize_

_Its hard to take courage_

_In a world full of people_

_You can lose sight of it all_

_And the darkness inside you_

_Can make you feel so small_

Harry's mother was still enough of a Muggle-born to insist on having a telephone. When Harry picked it up and said hello, there was a sharp intake of breath on the other end, then silence. "Draco?" Harry could hear the sound of a television playing a sit-com, the laugh track tinny and fake. "I'm here. Okay? I'm here." He sank down onto the floor, cradling the receiver. Draco never spoke. After fifteen minutes, the connection was broken.

_Show me a smile then,_

_Don't be unhappy, can't remember_

_When I last saw you laughing_

_If this world makes you crazy_

_And you've taken all you can bear_

_You call me up_

_Because you know I'll be there_

The calls came sporadically, but they came. And, still, only Harry spoke. Once, he heard Tori complaining in the background. Harry wished he could actually see Draco in the flesh, not just his pictures in the wizard tabloids. His face was thin now, making it more apparent than ever that it was composed entirely of angles, and seemingly frozen into a neutral expression. The wedding date was set, and even the more serious newspapers reported breathlessly on the bridal gown (strapless, corset-style bodice, twenty-foot train) and the venue (some pink stucco monstrosity in Miami).

Harry did his best to be patient, not wanting to scare Draco away, but after listening to a breathless report on the WWN about the plans to have at least two famous wizard bands playing the reception, his patience frayed and broke. "You're not happy," he said. "Why are you letting yourself be miserable when you don't have to be?"

_Click_.

For two weeks, there were none of the silent calls. Harry found himself looking at the Polaroid far too often. Its surface rippled and smeared from being touched. _I should have just hung up that first time he called; all I did was prolong the end_. In a spasm of anger, more at himself than at Draco, he burned the photo, lighting it and dropping it in the kitchen sink. He turned on the tap and watched the blackened remains swirl down the drain.

_I see your true colors_

_And that's why I love you_

_So don't be afraid to let them show_

Harry liked his job at the Ministry well enough. Running errands for the higher-ups kept him busy and helped burn off the nervous energy that he was suddenly too full of. He just wished that all the buzzing about the 'royal wedding' would cease. No wonder Draco had wanted to be a Muggle so badly; the fishbowl that was his life in the wizarding world would drive nearly anyone into rehab.

Then came the scandal: a mere two days before the wedding, Draco called it off. Harry wondered what it meant. _Maybe it means nothing. Maybe everything is meaningless. Maybe I should stop wasting my time worrying about someone who treated me so badly. _

Harry walked past a newsstand. Every paper had the same close-up of Draco's face, moving in synch. They blinked, they turned to look at the viewer, and they smiled.

_Your true colors_

_True colors are beautiful,_

_Like a rainbow_

The snow storm was in its fifth hour. Harry peered out a window to gauge how much had fallen, but it was a white-out. He jumped when the knock came. He opened the door and a body seemed to be blown in by the wind, surrounded by a whirlwind of flakes that stung when they hit Harry's face. He wrestled the door shut and gaped at the vision before him: Draco encrusted in crystalline white, flakes in his hair and eyebrows and lashes, melting on his cheeks and lips."How did you get here?" Harry asked, stupefied.

"A very long and roundabout path," Draco replied as he unbuttoned his overcoat.


	3. Chapter 3

Out of all the song suggestions that I got for the next installment in this series (I consider these more a series of one-shots than a multi-chapter fic), the one that sparked my imagination the most was 'Love Me Dead' by Ludo, suggested by HybridChaos. So call this one 'Love Me Dead.'

There is a good chance there will be another fic in this series, if I run across the right song.

Warning: deals with depression, addiction, and self-harm. It happens simultaneously with and after 'White House'-before 'Time After Time'. No, **Draco does NOT die!**

...

_Love me cancerously, like a salt-sore soaked in the sea._

_"High maintenance" means you're a gluttonous queen,_

_narcissistic and mean_

That summer in the bungalow, though Harry didn't know it, he was the third side of a love triangle. Draco wasn't able to give the boy all of himself because a part of him belonged to-no-was possessed-by _her_.

_Kill me romantically, fill my soul with vomit_

_then ask me for a piece of gum._

_Bitter and dumb, you're my sugarplum_

_you're awful, I love you_

She was Want. She was Need. She was the beast that gnawed inside him, howling and clawing and demanding _more more more_. She was the hole in his soul that he tried so desperately to fill. She was what he tried to fill it with. A pill, white powder, clear liquid that bubbled in a spoon. She had always been there, it seemed. There were words that were not mentioned in his family, words like _depression_ and _addiction_. When Draco went into rehab, after Harry left, his parents told friends and family that living in the Muggle world had caused him severe exhaustion. _He was doing the sort of labor that a house elf should do_, they said; _no wonder he collapsed_.

Another word the Malfoys would never use: _overdose_.

_She moves through moonbeams slowly_

_She knows just how to hold me_

_and when her edges soften, her body is my coffin._

_I know she drains me slowly_

_She wears me down to bones in bed..._

_must be the sign on my head, it says,_

_"Oh love me dead!" Love me dead_

For as long as he could remember, people had been telling Draco of all the things that were expected of him. His life was not a story that would unfold organically, but was a map to be followed precisely. There were to be no detours, no serendipitous twists or turns, no trips down back roads just to see what was there. By the time he was twelve, Draco felt like his existence was airless, sterile, numb. He had no word for what he was feeling, so he personified it. In his mind, she looked like the aunt he had only met once, the dark-haired one nobody would talk about any more: eyes too wide, hair too messy, nails too ragged. He added a huge, greedy mouth: a fang-ringed maw.

He found ways to make himself feel. A 'borrowed' car, the speedometer pushed as far as it would go. A lit cigarette touched to the tender skin of the inside of his wrist. Fights that ended with blood filling his mouth. In his fourteenth summer, he discovered that the great, burning-cold feeling of emptiness at his core shrank with a few sips of vodka. A few hits of sinsemilla reminded him of what happiness felt like. Coke made him want to dance all night long, and Ecstasy made him feel like he was at home in the universe.

_She_ grew more glamorous in his mind, but her mouth was still a black hole, endlessly hungry, just like him.

_You suck so passionately_

_You're a parasitic, psycho, filthy creature_

_finger-bangin' my heart._

_You call me up drunk, does the fun ever start?_

_You're hideous and sexy_

_Must be the sign on my head, it says,_

_"Oh love me dead!" Love me dead! _

Draco had been kicked off his school's team, and he only went to the match because all his friends were going. He had not expected to be so taken by the other team's Seeker, with the surprising grace that the gawky boy showed when he flew. Draco told himself he did not care for Quidditch any more, but he couldn't look away as the Seeker effortlessly followed the Snitch's swoops and feints, catching it half an hour into the match.

Afterwards, Draco and his friends got into a bar using fake IDs, Muggle-style. Harry was leaning against the bar with the other members of his team. "Great flying," Draco said, liking the way those green eyes crinkled at the corners when the boy smiled at him. They ended up having a long, drunken, rambling conversation, about nothing and everything. When Harry spoke of his reluctance to go back home to London, Draco invited him to share the bungalow he had already reserved for the summer. He had no word for the way Harry's goofy, toothy grin made him feel.

_Love me cancerously_

_How's your new boy? Does he know about me?_

_You've got the mark of the beast._

_You're born of a jackal! You're beautiful!_

That summer was drawing to a close, and the late August heat was smothering. Draco laid in a ditch dug into the beach sand; it was far cooler beneath the sun-baked surface. His eyes were closed under his sunglasses, and words floated up out of his brain. _Faggot_. A word he heard said in the contemptuous tone of voice that his friend Greg used when he uttered it. _Gay_. One little syllable that the Greengrass sisters used as a universal insult. _Homosexual. _A word he had heard his father say only once, when he thought Draco was in another room; the hushed way he said the word made it sound like something sinister.

_Love_. That was the correct word, wasn't it? The way Draco felt high around Harry, even before he had a hit of anything. The way he thought Harry was perfect, from his comb-resistant hair to his knobby knees to his ridiculously large feet. The way he wanted to press himself against Harry so hard that they would enter each other's skins.

_Secret_. Another word that was not spoken by the Malfoys. They did not need to say it; they lived it.

That night, Pansy saw Harry and Draco kissing, though neither of the boys knew it.

_What about this sign on my head_

_it says "Oh love me dead!"_

For weeks now, Draco had known that he would have to choose between Harry and _her_.

Draco stared at Harry as the other boy stood before him, covered with blood and waiting for sympathy. Without the hole in his soul and the things that he filled it with, who would Draco be? They had been a part of him for so long. It looked easy from the outside, choosing happiness over the screaming void. From the inside, it was terrifying. "I told you not to tell anyone, Harry!" Draco said coldly. It was an easy escape, a way to go back to his comfortably familiar misery. In two days, Harry was gone.

_Love me dead! Love me dead! Love me dead!_

_Oh...love me dead!_

_She _had never left him. The whole time he was with Harry, she was there, whispering to him, intruding jealously on their most intimate moments. Now she was his one and only, his everything. She was the needle as it pierced the skin, the blood that entered the syringe and mixed with the heroin, the wave of blissful forgetfulness that washed over him when it hit his bloodstream. Vaguely, he heard Pansy screaming as his head cracked against the floor, and then everything was fuzzy warm blackness.


End file.
